VINTAGE BOOKS TO PUBLISH NEW NOVELS BASED ON THE “VERONICA MARS” TELEVSION SERIES. THE FIRST NOVEL WILL BE PUBLISHED TO COINCIDE WITH THE RELEASE OF THE UPCOMING “VERONICA MARS” FEATURE FILM.

 

Rob Thomas, the show’s creator and the film’s director, will develop and co-write the books, which will feature the characters from his popular television series.

 

NEW YORK (July 15, 2013)– Vintage Books Publisher Anne Messitte announced today that Vintage has acquired from Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros, two books in an original mystery series featuring characters from the popular “Veronica Mars” television program. The books will contain completely new stories, and will be stand-alone novels that will appeal to fans of the show, as well as general mystery readers. The plot of the first book in the series will begin where events of the upcoming “Veronica Mars” film end, and will feature an adult Veronica Mars. Rob Thomas, the show's creator (and the author of several novels prior to his television career), will develop and co-write the book series.

 

The “Veronica Mars” television series (2004 - 2007) is set in the fictional town of Neptune, California, and stars Kristen Bell as a high school (and later college) student who moonlights as a private investigator under the eye of her detective father. One of the first noir series to feature a young-adult female sleuth, the show garnered critical acclaim, and was named one of the “Best Cult TV Shows from the Past 25 Years” by Entertainment Weekly, and one of the “Best 50 TV Shows of All Time” by Empire magazine.  Such luminaries as Joss Whedon and Stephen King praised the show, and King called it: “Nancy Drew meets Philip Marlowe, and the result is pure nitro.” Since going off the air in 2007, popularity for the show has continued to grow. The cult status of the show encouraged Thomas to start a Kickstarter-fueled campaign to bring the characters back in a feature movie with much of the original cast, which he will direct. Warner Bros. will release the film “Veronica Mars” in 2014.

 

“I started my career as a novelist. Veronica Mars was first imagined as a novel. I'm thrilled that I'm going to get the opportunity to continue telling Veronica Mars stories in a form I've loved and missed,” Thomas said.

 

“Veronica Mars has always been a one-of-a-kind character, and, as a longtime fan of the series, I've always thought there is an immense amount of story left to be told. Our goal for the book series is to appeal to fans of the show, but also to appeal to mystery readers and lovers of series featuring strong, intriguing female protagonist,” said acquiring editor Andrea Robinson.  “Veronica Mars is a contemporary update to the tradition of noir crime fiction that was established by Vintage’s Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, so it's exciting that we'll also publish her here.”

 

The first book in the series is scheduled to be released in Spring 2014.  The deal was negotiated by Jodi Reamer at Writers House, LLC.

 

Vintage Books is an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, which is a division of Random House, Inc., whose parent company is Bertelsmann AG, the international media company.  Known as an industry-leading paperback publisher, its roster of authors includes Stieg Larsson, Dan Brown, Jennifer Egan, Richard Russo, Jon Krakauer, Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy, Haruki Murakami, and Dave Eggers, among others.

 

Alloy Entertainment, a division of Warner Bros. Television Group, develops and produces original novels, television series, and feature films. More than seventy-five of AE’s books have been on the New York Times bestseller list, including The Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, Gossip Girl, The Clique, The Lying Game, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Private, and The Luxe. AE has successfully adapted several of its top selling books into hit television shows for broadcast across multiple networks including The CW, ABC, ABC Family, and Nickelodeon. Current Alloy Entertainment television series include Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries, Lying Game, and soon to premiere Originals, Ravenswood, and The 100.